emain with all
their tortured and torturing passions about them, often self-disgusted,
self-humiliated? The enmities of genius are often connected with their
morbid imagination. These originate in casual slights, or in unguarded
expressions, or in hasty opinions, or in witty derision, or even in the
obtruding goodness of tender admonition. The man of genius broods over the
phantom that darkens his feelings: he multiplies a single object; he
magnifies the smallest; and suspicions become certainties. It is in this
unhappy state that he sharpens his vindictive fangs, in a libel called his
"Memoirs," or in another species of public outrage, styled a "Criticism."

We are told that COMINES the historian, when residing at the court of the
Count de Charolois, afterwards Duke of Burgundy, one day returning from
hunting, with inconsiderate jocularity sat down before the Count, and
ordered the prince to pull off his boots. The Count would not affect
greatness, and having executed his commission, in return for the princely
amusement, the Count dashed the boot on Comines' nose, which bled; and
from that time, he was mortified at the court of Burgundy, by retaining
the nickname of _the booted head._ The blow rankled in the heart of the
man of genius, and the Duke of Burgundy has come down to us in COMINE'S
"Memoirs," blackened by his vengeance. Many, unknown to their readers,
like COMINES, have had a booted head; but the secret poison is distilled
on their lasting page, as we have recently witnessed in Lord Waldegrave's
"Memoirs." Swift's perpetual malevolence to Dryden originated in that
great poet's prediction, that "cousin Swift would never be a poet;" a
prediction which the wit never could forget. I have elsewhere fully
written a tale of literary hatred, where is seen a man of genius, in the
character of GILBERT STUART, devoting a whole life to harassing the
industry or the genius which he himself could not attain.[A]

[Footnote A: See "Calamities of Authors," pp. 131--139.]

A living Italian poet, of great celebrity, when at the court of Rome,
presented a magnificent edition of his poetry to Pius VI. The bard, Mr.
Hobhouse informs us, lived not in the good graces of his holiness, and
although the pontiff accepted the volume, he did not forbear a severity of
remark which could not fall unheeded by the modern poet; for on this
occasion, repeating some verses of Metastasio, his holiness drily added,
"No one now-a-days writes like